Karen Mercury (26 page)

“Amen to that,” said Jeremiah. “Gravity is a heartless bitch. And those whirling dust clouds toward Cheyenne will be even more heartless unless we get this show on the road.”

Worth had the impression that all of his sons-in-law enjoyed Simon, now that they had learned how to handle him. Worth—and even Foster—had not been officially introduced to Mr. Hudson yet, and Worth was eager to make a good impression.

So now he put a hand lightly on the older man’s shoulder and said, “You can come over here, keep score with us.”

“You’re rolling the hoops, Worth,” said Jeremiah as the players walked to where their horses were picketed. “You can’t be keeping score.”

“
I’m
rolling the hoops,” said a big buffalo named Smack. Worth believed he was an explosives expert for the railroad. “I’ve rolled them for Remington Rudy many times. How often have
you
rolled them?”

“The more the merrier,” said Simon. “You can both roll hoops.”

“That’s not really true,” said Montreal Jed. “More does not equal merry. If there were two hundred people all rolling hoops at once, would that be merry? No, it would not. It would be a stampede.”

This appeared to confuse Smack. “All right, you Lollipop Kid,” he said belligerently. “That’s enough from you. Senator Spiro, tell him. I’ve rolled for Rudy a hundred times. Besides,” he said confidentially, “if I roll for Rudy, he’s more likely to win.”

Derrick Spiro had to appear tactful at this, of course. “Take turns to make it more impartial, Smack.”

“Impartial my ass,” Smack growled. He grabbed a nearby hoop, the smallest size that they used for manual practice while not on horseback. Taking a length of reata, he swiftly fashioned a sort of necklace with it, so the ten-inch hoop hung over his considerable belly. “Hey, Rudy!” he bellowed through a cupped hand, pointing at his gut. “I’m the hoop roller!”

“Fine,” said Worth calmly. “Makes me no difference. Hey, Mr. Hudson.” He wanted Simon Hudson to notice him—and, of course, to approve of him. “Have you seen Caleb Poindexter today? Reason I ask. I know he’s a great healer, and I’ve been having some gout problems.”

Simon’s face lit up, and he drank from an empty horn of beer that had been sticking out of his waistcoat. “Caleb has recommended a poultice of yucca for my gout! I tell you, that man is a visionary of the highest order.”

“I agree completely,” Worth said warmly. Naturally, he had heard Tabitha say that her father believed in Caleb’s abilities. Otherwise, he never would have brought up the name of the seer who seemed to divide citizens’ opinions hotly. “We held a séance with him, and he levitated nearly to the ceiling. Half a dozen witnesses were present that can attest to the same thing.”

“That Caleb!” Simon chuckled fondly, as though Caleb had merely slipped on a banana peel. “Always up to something interesting. I haven’t seen him yet today, but I imagine he’s around somewhere. He’s acquainted with just about everyone in town, although some doubt his abilities. I say that floating on air is more believable than walking on water. He’s probably here, disguised as a cow.”

“Or as one of those poor calves they’re roping,” said Jeremiah. He pulled his greatcoat closer around him, looking up at the darkening sky. “This is not a good scenario to employ the hoop game, and this is the game Ezra made sure we included in the rodeo. Look, Foster just completely missed that one hoop Smack rolled. Now it’s Rudy’s turn.”

Indeed, the wind had picked up such speed that Foster’s spear had missed the hoop by about three feet, and Rudy didn’t fare much better. He only hit one of the outer “wolf” rings that didn’t count for as many points as the inner heart. The crowd of about two hundred spectators was clearly rooting for Rudy, and some started to berate Smack for being a bad hoop roller.

“You’re just as slow as a crippled turtle, Smack!” one citizen bawled.

“I’ll show you, Hopkins!” Smack hollered back. “Your family tree is only a shrub!”

“You roll, Worth,” Jeremiah urged. “You can roll straighter than that big husky, and Tabitha’s up next.”

“That’s my daughter!” Simon toasted Tabitha with his empty horn and sipped from it again.

Senator Spiro indicated that Smack should step aside and let Worth roll, although Smack bumped Worth bodily with his gut on his way out of the playing field. “Jackass,” Smack snarled.

“Lunkhead,” Worth replied.

One sight gave Worth the creeps, though. Just as Tabitha’s pony galloped onto the field and Worth could roll the hoop with the wooden paddle, he caught a glimpse of Orianna.

She huddled in an enormous bear’s fur at the far end of the crowd, where she could hardly have had a good view of the riders. But it was her, all right. Foster had told Worth last night that he had told her the jig was up, and she had agreed to return to San Francisco to retrieve his son, so everything had apparently been on an even keel. Now, she held opera glasses up to her face, but Worth had to let the hoop roll free and avoid the prairie dog mounds that often tripped up horses.

He thought he’d done a pretty good job, and Tabitha looked in fine form as she hurled the spear. Her shimmering blonde hair flew undone from her coiffure, and her tight bodice showed off her figure beautifully. Worth could practically feel the jealous rays emanating from the remote figure that was Orianna, and then Tabitha’s spear did an extremely peculiar thing.

Not only did it miss the rolling hoop utterly, it
veered
in its course. It wasn’t just the wind that had by now picked up to nearly hurricane force. Whirlwinds of dust whipped up the flaps of vaquero’s tents like surging waves, but that couldn’t have accounted for how far off course Tabitha’s spear was hurled. The sharpened pole took what looked like a right angle in its trajectory, coming straight for Worth!

He had only a fraction of a second to think. In fact, his body had to run
before
he thought. He ran to the left, toward the audience, scurrying like a frantic spider, hunched over, arms covering his head. He only stopped and turned when he was certain he was out of the spear’s path, and an even stranger sight greeted him.

Smack, waddling into the field for his next turn at hoop-rolling with the small hoop bouncing across his gut, quite literally made a giant target. Still, it was impossible how Tabitha’s spear again zigzagged and made a beeline for Smack. Tabitha and Foster had now trotted over to where Worth stood, hands at sides, dumbfounded. The pole pierced Smack’s gut—making a perfect heart’s coup for the most possible points—and he toppled over.

This injury would probably not have been lethal. The stick was not
terribly
sharp, and from the way it bobbed after sticking him, it had only entered his gut about two inches.

It was what happened
after
Smack fell that was confounding. When Smack hit the ground, he exploded. It was not a matter of having eaten too many beans. This man
exploded
, as though he’d swallowed a stick of dynamite. Pieces of his blue shirt and shiny bright innards and limbs rained down for maybe twenty feet in all directions. Most people ran away from the scene, but Foster and Worth, experienced backwoodsmen, ran toward it.

“How can a spear cause a fellow to explode?” Foster asked as they sprinted.

“It can’t,” said Worth. “And did you see that impossible path it took?”

“Impossible,” Foster agreed.

There was not much scene to see. Smack’s legs were still mostly in one piece where he’d fallen, but the spear had been blown to kingdom come, along with the rest of Smack’s considerable body. There was no need to get too close, and they were backing away when Tabitha’s voice came from behind them.

“That’s impossible! Obviously I threw the spear at the hoop Worth had rolled. Did you see how many turns it took on its way to Smack’s belly?”

The crowd now roared something unintelligible. Jeremiah, Simon, and Derrick, standing closer with their scorecards, pointed and screamed something like “look out!”

Worth turned to see Orianna about to hurl a spear from a running position. Since the three were gathered in a close knot, it was difficult to tell who her target was. “Scatter!” Foster advised, and they did, like fireworks spraying in all directions.

Foster would not be her logical target. Worth had just been her target five minutes ago, but that was probably only to make Tabitha look bad, as Tabitha had hurled the spear. Perhaps she was angry that her trick with Tabitha’s pole hadn’t worked. Well, not as she had intended, anyway. Orianna probably cared less that Smack had exploded.

Perhaps because of her fashionable, narrow gown, or the fact that she wouldn’t let her bear fur coat go—and maybe due to her heeled slippers—Orianna’s throw wasn’t terribly accurate. It seemed to have been meant for Tabitha, but Tabitha easily skittered and ducked out of its pathway, and now it sailed into a little herd of calves that vaqueros were roping for branding. It jerked and made a few turns in its path, as though searching for a secondary target.

Well, there was nothing to be done about that, and Worth breathed a sigh of relief as Neil Tempest jogged to slap some bracelets on Orianna. But apparently Jeremiah thought he could help the calves.

“Nooooooo…” he moaned, audible above the wind that now howled through fence posts, tent posts, and spectators’ legs. He ran like the wind, maybe assisted by it being at his back, his arms out straight as though feeling for an invisible wall. His Stetson was knocked off his head, blowing about like a dandelion seed, and Jeremiah headed right for the knot of calves, diving on in.

Worth and his friends, and Rudy, Derrick, and Simon, among others, jogged over to find Jeremiah wrestling a calf, just like the professional vaqueros did! He pinned it with his lightweight body and with his free hand grappled for a reata a helpful vaquero threw to him. In a flash he had tied the calf’s hooves immobile, cheered on by the vaqueros. Perhaps his past circus experience had assisted him in this rope-tying, and now Jeremiah sat up straight and smiled with relief.

Worth walked off a bit and found the spear lying harmlessly. From the trajectory, he saw that it could have easily speared the calf. Although the spears controlled by Orianna did have a way of veering off course, if this one’s course had stayed true, it would have pierced the poor calf.

The vaqueros and spectators cheered Jeremiah. Some caballeros took Jeremiah on their shoulders and paraded him about while he called to Worth, “Look! I saved the calf! I saved the calf!”

Worth waved back. “That you did!”

He supposed this was the end of the rodeo, but there were many loose ends, so to speak. Questions that needed answering.

“Was that the strangest thing you’ve ever seen?” Tabitha asked.

“Yes!” agreed Foster. “I had no idea Jeremiah was capable of anything like that.”

Tabitha slapped Foster with the back of her hand. “No, silly. I mean the spears, the poles. I’m presuming others witnessed the same thing. I mean, Neil is arresting Orianna and not me, I suppose for the murder of Smack, but…”

“Yes,” Worth agreed. “What was
that
all about? It looked as though he just
exploded
.”

Foster waved Neil Tempest over, and Harley came as well. As the two men probably the most accustomed to seeing the insides of people’s bodies, they discussed Smack’s explosion.

It was Harley who came up with the first logical theory. “As a demolition man, perhaps he had some equipment on his person. It did look like the sort of damage that dynamite would do. Does anyone else have a headache? The nitroglycerine will do that to you.”

Indeed, the grass surrounding where Smack had stood was burnt, and a section of fence was blasted away.

“There’s that sweet, hot metal smell of gunpowder,” said Foster. “Could Smack have had dynamite in his pocket?”

“That’s entirely possible,” said Harley. “When he fell over from the impact of the spear, if he had a blasting cap and dynamite in his pocket, hitting the ground could’ve ignited it. And he’s not terribly intelligent. If his brains were dynamite, there wouldn’t be enough to blow his nose.”

Tabitha now slapped her brother-in-law. “Very cute, Harley. Neil, what are you going to do with Orianna?”

The bedraggled yet feisty woman sat handcuffed in a wagon while one of Neil’s deputies hitched it to a mount. She struggled, as though she could find a way out of the bracelets.

Remington Rudy said, “I doubt anyone will slip her the key. Right, Neil?”

Neil said, “I don’t really know what we can charge her with.”

Tabitha said hotly, “She hurled that spear directly at me!”

Neil said, “All right, some sort of attempt at murder. Alameda is the justice of the peace. She can assist with the charge.”

Worth mentioned, “But you want Orianna to return to San Francisco and get your son.”

Tabitha said, “Perhaps you can go, Foster. Retrieve the boy. That way we’re assured of no shenanigans while Neil holds her here in jail.”

Foster’s face was lit up with glad emotion. He seemed to be considering the idea when Harley pointed to a sheep that was being pushed across the prairie by the force of the wind. “We should take cover in our homes. This is a regular hurricane gale.”